Casey Stoner, second, finished 76 thousandths away from the fastest time, followed by Dani Pedrosa, third, and Andrea Dovizioso, sixth, in the first free practice sessions held at Misano
Five days after the last race that took place last Sunday at the United States, the Motorcycling World Championship crossed the Atlantic to celebrate with little time to rest the San Marino Grand Prix, of which the first free practice sessions took place today. Casey Stoner, who was the fastest in the first session, finished just a few thousandths away from the fastest time of the day, set by Jorge Lorenzo. Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso, who improved their times in the second session, finished in third and sixth position, respectively.
A searing heat welcomed the riders of the Continental Circus, that today took the Misano track showing a very high level. The Repsol rider Casey Stoner led the morning session, after 18 laps where he set a fastest time of 1 minute, 34 seconds and 180 thousandths. In the second free practice session, the Australian of the Repsol Honda Team improved his time by 175 thousandths after 19 laps, which he finished 76 thousandths behind Jorge Lorenzo, who set the fastest time of the day.
Behind Stoner finished Dani Pedrosa, who after 20 laps in the first session and 22 more in the second, concluded 200 thousandths behind his team mate. After the first tweaks in the set-up of his Honda RC212V, Andrea Dovizioso finished sixth, improving his morning time slightly although still with a good margin to improve for tomorrow, when the third free practice session will take place, as well as the Qualifying, which will determine the starting grid for Sunday’s race.
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
FP1 – 1:34.529, 20 laps, 85 km.
FP2 – 1:34.205, 22 laps, 93 km.
“We had a good start in the morning, I felt quite comfortable from the beginning, but in the afternoon we didn’t improve as much as I would have liked.When Bautista’s engine blew in front of me I thought the track would become dirty, so I did some slow laps to check and I lost some time and rhythm.
We have to keep working with the suspension to get better traction and stability under hard braking, so we will focus on this tomorrow. I tried both tyre compounds, the hard one only this afternoon, and we still don’t know which one will be better for the race”.
Andrea Dovizioso >> Audio
FP1 – 1:35.011, 22 laps, 93 km.
FP2 – 1:34.989, 22 laps, 93 km.
“Today we worked on the general set up of the bike and in the afternoon we made some changes to the rear setting but we didn’t achieve the results we wanted. We need to continue working on the set up to reduce the pitching in the front and the rear. This is a slow track but with many hard braking areas and strong acceleration so we will analyse the data to understand the most critical areas where I am losing time. It was very hot today but the track conditions were ok. We rode with both soft and hard tyres and I felt good on the bike, so now the first thing to do is to study the data and evaluate the best direction to follow in preparation of the qualifying and race. I’m confident that we can recover the gap from the front riders”.
Casey Stoner >> Audio
FP1 – 1:34.180, 18 laps, 76 km.
FP2 – 1:34.005, 19 laps, 80 km.
“We made a pretty good step this morning, everything felt pretty good and the bike was working well.We tried a few things this afternoon, but had a slight problem with some air in the brake line which cost us some time. Then we did race distance on the soft tyre and got some good data from that, we’re doing some reasonably competitive times but not good enough yet, we’ll go away tonight and work in preparation for tomorrow. We still need to get the bike feeling a little more comfortable in the middle of the corner and on the exit, with traction as well as turning. If we can improve these areas then I’m confident we can also improve the lap time quite a lot”.
